1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to the manufacture of fused brushware products and, preferably, to such products which are constructed of a single raw material so that the finished product may be recycled when it is no longer functional. The brushware product is intended to be constructed from a minimum of material and provide brush tufts radiating inwardly or outwardly from a curved surface.
2 . Description of the Prior Art
Many different types of brushes have been devised over the years from an original tree branch or shrub branch, and developing into wire-set, anchor-set, staple-set, twisted-in-wire and resin-set designs. These designs include both natural and synthetic filament materials. There was also developed a method of fusing like materials such as polypropylene monofilament into a molded section of polypropylene to form a basic brushware configuration. Many prior patents invented by John C. Lewis, Jr., the inventor herein, disclose different variations and improvements in this overall concept. Representative of such patents are U.S. Pat. No. 3,604,043; 4,189,189; 4,291,431; 4,348,060; 4,690,277; and 4,693,519, the disclosures of which are hereby incorporated by reference. These patents in general disclose tufted fused brush construction and mat-like devices wherein synthetic filament tufts are fused to molded base sections. There is no disclosure, however, therein of a brush or broom construction which can be obtained from a flat mat projection of the resulting three-dimensional object. The patents do disclose methods for tufting articles which methods are used to form the constructions of this invention.
In U.S. Pat. No. 5,114,214, there is described an effort to make a toothbrush having tufts set in brush sections which are separated by attenuation grooves. The patent describes a process for heating the grooves so that the brush sections may be bent to form a radial or other type of surface wherein each section is disposed at an angle to adjacent sections but each individual section is contained in a single plane. Also in U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,763 and 4,988,146 there are described different means for forming a brush construction wherein the tuft end is melted and then set in a cavity of heat-softened material. In U.S. Pat. No. 5,224,763, a collar is provided around the cavity which, in turn, is swaged to secure the tuft in the cavity. Also, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,988,146, the cavity is heat softened and may be formed in a variety of different geometric designs. These patents, however, also do not describe the means for making a three-dimensional body from a flat sheet projection.